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Actors Cast Based On Their Physical Peculiarities

Lock Martin, who was over 7ft tall - how tall seems to vary from 7ft 1 inch to 7ft 7 inches.
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And in his most famous role

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Shameless Lynch ref. Carel Struycken (The Fireman) in Twin Peaks. ... and Lurch

Speaking of Lurch ... Struycken took over the role of Lurch for the Addams Family movies because Ted Cassidy (the original Lurch from the TV series) had died in 1979.

Cassidy, like the other actors mentioned in this thread, found himself type-cast in odd and menacing roles because of his size (6 ft. 9 in.) and deep voice. However ...

Cassidy's height and features weren't attributed to acromegaly or any other medical issue. He was simply a very tall normal man. He'd been a college athlete, DJ and news reporter before becoming a full-time actor.

Perhaps as a result, Cassidy was one of the few type-cast 'different' folks who didn't always appreciate his casting history. In later years Cassidy specialized in voice acting and declined live action roles. The year before his death (1978) he bemoaned his lack of success in being cast as anything other than a menacing figure ...

"If I'm up for a part if, I'm asked to play something, I really worry what I'm going to be because they always make fellows like me the big dumb galoot, the oaf who doesn't know anything, who trips over himself. We are apparently idiots, all big men. You end up never leading anybody to anything. You end up holding people, while the boss hits them in the face -- scratching your head a lot wondering where all your marbles went. Well, that kind of thing doesn't appeal to me at all. I used to think that's how it was and I would do it, but I won't do it anymore. I turn down everything that comes along like that. ..."

When asked which role he took pride in and wished to be remembered for he said:

"None. None of them! I don't want to be remembered for any of them because I don't like any of them. I'm not proud of any of them. I am still waiting for the one role I will have pride in and want to be associated with down the years."

SOURCE: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0144252/bio
 
Speaking of Lurch ... Struycken took over the role of Lurch for the Addams Family movies because Ted Cassidy (the original Lurch from the TV series) had died in 1979.

Cassidy, like the other actors mentioned in this thread, found himself type-cast in odd and menacing roles because of his size (6 ft. 9 in.) and deep voice. However ...

Cassidy's height and features weren't attributed to acromegaly or any other medical issue. He was simply a very tall normal man. He'd been a college athlete, DJ and news reporter before becoming a full-time actor.

Perhaps as a result, Cassidy was one of the few type-cast 'different' folks who didn't always appreciate his casting history. In later years Cassidy specialized in voice acting and declined live action roles. The year before his death (1978) he bemoaned his lack of success in being cast as anything other than a menacing figure ...



When asked which role he took pride in and wished to be remembered for he said:



SOURCE: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0144252/bio
That's really very sad, especially as Cassidy's role as Lurch was so well-loved.
As Lurch. he came across as somewhat world-weary, bless'im.
 
Yes, me too. You should be able to do work you are proud of.

But then so many actors settle for demeaning roles.
 
One person who was employed because of his disability what the guy who lost his forearms (in Vietnam?) and was used as a double for Dr Copper in the 1982 "The Thing."

Didn't David Rappaport kill himself because he was being passed over for roles and he got offered crap casting due to his height?

Ronald Lacey had a variety of medical conditions and felt that the industry was ranged against people like him. He considered setting up an actors agency to help people who he felt had been ignored like him...but then he got a part in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and everything turned out well for him - for a while...
 
Didn't David Rappaport kill himself because he was being passed over for roles and he got offered crap casting due to his height?
His final role was Kivas Fajo in an episode of Star Trek. I wouldn't call that a minor role. If anything, it would have launched him into a new level.
But they had to get Saul Rubinek to re-film all his footage.
 
Yes I dislike seeing actors typecast because of their appearance but it happens to most of them I think. If they look a certain way or if they did particularly well in a certain role, that's it.
 
Rappaport was being general with his comments. He wasn't to know that Fajo *might* have rekindled his career. He was upset that he was only cast as "the token dwarf" and not because of his talent. He didn't think that people could look beyond his stature - and from what I've read over the years, people with a disability feel the same way in the acting profession.
 
See also Laird Cregar, a giant of a man who was almost always cast as villains when he longed to be a romantic Hollywood leading man. So he crash dieted and put so much strain on his heart that he died at only 31. Typecasting is common, but what you look like on the outside isn't necessarily how you feel on the inside.
 
Yes I dislike seeing actors typecast because of their appearance but it happens to most of them I think. If they look a certain way or if they did particularly well in a certain role, that's it.
... Typecasting is common, but what you look like on the outside isn't necessarily how you feel on the inside.

Unfortunately, there's an unavoidable flip side to these issues. Any theatrical / TV / film production is an exercise in creating and packaging audio / visual imagery. Certain appearances (and / or sounds) fit the intended representational purpose better than others. Some appearances / sounds detract from the representational purpose - even to the point of raising concerns they may be off-putting to the audience.

A role is in effect a full-body 'mask' - i.e., an artificial projection of a certain believable person or personality. If you don't manifest or project the intended mask you won't be cast. To some extent it's the same sort of issue faced in any number of other jobs for which there are presumptive qualifications requirements.
 
A role is in effect a full-body 'mask' - i.e., an artificial projection of a certain believable person or personality. If you don't manifest or project the intended mask you won't be cast. To some extent it's the same sort of issue faced in any number of other jobs for which there are presumptive qualifications requirements.
But a decent actor can do exactly that. That is why they are an actor!
 
Not a physical peculiarty as such, but a physical oddity... Somewhere I wrote about half-watching a movie on you-Tube, not paying sufficent attention and assuming because the dialogue was in French and the setting was North American, that the film had been made in Canada (my search term had been French-Canadian horror films, so that was a reasonable assumption). Therefore I was intrigued enough to look up the cast, or what I presumed were the cast from the end credits. After some confusion, when checking out their film biographies online, I realised: this was originally an American film that had been dubbed into French. I'd been looking up not the original actors but the French ones who had done the dubbed voices (the credit card for the dubbing actors had come up first on the credits - before the original American cast.) What struck me as extraordinarily weird was that I'd not noticed this, because two of the French actors - who were only dubbing the voices, remember, and would never be seen onscreen - had a marked physical resemblence to the actress and the actor they were voicing. A resemblence good enough to fool me when looking them up on the net to see what else they'd been in. But they would have been hired not for the physical resemblence, but on the basis of how well they could carry the roles, voice-only, in the dub? This is just so odd....
 
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Albert Finney/Brian Cox?

I've watched several films/TV shows with either Albert Finney or Michael Gambon thinking that I was watching the other one. Probably because they both appeared in Dennis Potter's works.

And Brian Cox looks nothing like Albert Finney ;)

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They think they have problems! The makers of tv's Addams Family had difficulty with their Thing:

"Thing was originally conceived as a whole creature (always seen in the background watching the family) that was too horrible to see in person. The only part of it that was tolerable was its human hand* . . . "

Who could they get to play it?

"Call that guy from The Monkey's Paw, mangled man, whatever his name is. He hasn't worked since 1934 . . . " :oops:

*Ironically, that rather ruled out the guy later to star in "The Thing" - mentioned above!
 
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Clint Howard tends to get cast in roles that require someone unconventional looking. He seems to have built a decent career on playing alien babies, convicts and a serial killer on Seinfeld.

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Clint Howard tends to get cast in roles that require someone unconventional looking. He seems to have built a decent career on playing alien babies, convicts and a serial killer on Seinfeld.

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I wonder why?

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He'll always been 'Gentle Ben's friend' to me.

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Which reminds me of the greatest lunchbox I've ever seen!

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According to Bryce Dallas Howard, Clint's niece, he chooses his roles to make sure they won't interrupt his golf.
If I'm out for a pleasant stroll and I see Clint Howard walking toward me wielding a 5-iron, I'll be out of there quicker than Road Runner on a motorbike.
 
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